This is my personal blog. I was Branch Secretary of Lambeth UNISON from 1992 to 2017 and a member of the National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON, the public service union (www.unison.org.uk) from 2003 to 2017.
I am Chair of Brighton Pavilion Constituency Labour Party and of the Sussex Labour Representation Committee (LRC).
Neither the Labour Party nor UNISON is responsible for the contents of this personal blog. (Nor is my employer!)

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

The link above is to a twenty two year old story about how (then) public sector employers, British Coal and British Rail, used the withdrawal of what was then called "check-off" as a weapon in industrial relations disputes.

It's not accidental that this happened last time a majority Conservative Government was elected. The only difference, in 2015, is that we call "check-off" DOCAS (deduction of contributions at source) (at least, we do in UNISON).

We know that, under the previous Government, Tory ministers initiated the withdrawal of DOCAS ‎in the civil service. We know that their manifesto more than hints that they will continue. We know that they don't need to legislate to pursue this policy directly in the English health service, nor to encourage this approach to local authorities under their control.

Continuing to rely upon employers to collect 70% of our subscription income in current circumstances would be wildly irresponsible - and would leave the health unions with no where to go when the Government ask us to choose between DOCAS and the defence of unsocial hours payments.

‎

The unforeseen attack upon our political funds deserves the condemnation which will be heaped upon it (no one asks us to opt-in to paying the extra cost of our groceries accounted for by donations from retailers to the Tory Party!) However, we mustn't lose sight of the urgent need, in this hostile environment, to wean our trade union off its dependence upon our employers to collect our subscription income.

The campaign for workers to opt-in to our political fund must also be a campaign to shift payment of union subscriptions to direct debit.

Anyone wishing to understand what the Government’s commitment
to legislate “so that there shall be a transparent opt-in process for the
political fund element of trade unions subscriptions” will mean can be guided
by their reference to the fact that this will “reflect the existing practice in
Northern Ireland.”

That practice can be deduced from UNISON Rule J.5 which
reflects the provisions of the Trade
Union and Labour Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1995. For those
with a sense of history this is a bit like 1927,
as it requires members positively to opt-in to pay the political fund, rather
than, as at present, to opt-out if they don’t want to. (Thatcher and Major never did this - they just imposed political fund ballots upon us).

Clearly this will have the effect of significantly
reducing our political funds, unless we mount a major campaign to get people to
opt-in (this will also beg the question of why we also have to have decennial
membership ballots to retain our political funds since the only contributors
will also have opted in individually).

If we have to approach all our members to ask them to
opt-in to the political fund we will also have to decide what we say to the 70%
of members who pay their subscriptions by deduction from salary (deduction of
contributions at source - DOCAS), which we know is at immediate risk wherever
the Tories hold sway. Are we going to have a major campaign to opt-in to the
political fund without using the opportunity to transfer payment of
subscriptions to direct debit? (That would not make sense, and would be
contrary to the decision already taken by the Development and Organisation
(D&O) Committee of the UNISON National Executive Council (NEC)).

It will also be interesting to find out what the
practical impact is, in Northern Ireland, of Article
60 of the 1995 Order, which requires employers to refrain from deducting
that part of the subscriptions which go to the political fund (if they deduct
union subscriptions) if requested to do so by an employee. If political funds become opt-in that will mean that
there will be (for UNISON) two rates of subscription for each salary band (one
for members who haven’t opted in, and one for those who have). This increased
complexity wouldn’t necessarily drive supportive employers away from supporting
DOCAS, but it will highlight the fact that such employers will be facilitating
payments to the political funds of trade unions.

Who wants to bet me one month’s subscription to the
Affiliated Political Fund that we’ll soon be hearing that it is inappropriate
for public sector employers to make deductions from salaries to go towards a
trade union political fund? How long before the Taxpayers Alliance use the Freedom of Information Act to publicise the exact amount of political fund contributions for Labour affiliated unions which are being made by each Labour Council?

Every trade unionist should contribute to the political
fund which gives their union a political voice – and we need to campaign to win
that argument with our members, whilst at the same time, securing the future
payment of subscriptions by moving to a means which is harder for a hostile
Government to disrupt.

It’s ever so kind of a Tory Government to want to “reform” our trade unions – and I’d like
to do something to them in return really, as I am sure would millions of
others.

Obviously the precise meaning of this single sentence in
a brief speech will mean more when we see the forthcoming Trade Union Bill –
but there are two points that are worth making now.

First, if the entirety of the proposed legislative “reform” of trade unions were to be the
restriction on strike action it would have made no sense to refer to both this “reform” and – separately – to the
restriction on strike action in public services.

Secondly, the Queen’s speech is just a list of major
legislative proposals (indeed the elderly lady in the funny hat herself said “other measures will be laid before you.”)
Measures which a Conservative majority Government can take without the need for
new primary legislation don’t need to be listed in the Queen’s speech.

It would be wise therefore for the trade unions to
prepare to face all of the challenges set down for us in the Conservative
manifesto, including;

·A
50% turnout threshold in ballots for official strike action;

·A
higher threshold of support from 40% of all those entitled to vote in ballots
for official strike action in health, education, fire and transport;

·Repeal
of regulations which prevent the use of agency staff to break strikes;

·A
time limit on the validity of strike ballot results;

·Legislation
to “ensure trade unions use a transparent
opt-in process for union subscription;”

There are some details of the proposed Trade Union Bill available
online (see pp38-39). This does suggest that the primary legislative focus
will be on restricting strike action, with a side order of interfering with our
political funds. We would, however, be unwise to ignore the fact that attacks on the
deduction of trade union subscriptions from salary and upon trade union
facility time have not required (and do not require) legislation.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Trade unionists are often complaining about the number of jobs which have been eliminated as a result of the savage spending cuts of the previous Government, now set to be accelerated.

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So we should probably celebrate the creation of some useful new opportunities for gainful employment - for "independent assurers" ‎who are now required to audit our compliance with our statutory duty to maintain an accurate membership register.

UNISON's National Executive Council (NEC) is proposing a rule amendment to write into our Rule Book the requirement to appoint such an assurer - because we are required to do so by Part Three of the Lobbying Act.

Under the Membership Audit Certificate ‎(Qualified Independent Person) (Specified Conditions) Order 2015 the independent assurer must be a solicitor, an auditor or a scrutineer (authorised to act as an external scrutineer of trade union ballots).

‎The subscription income collected from low paid workers can therefore now be spent paying a solicitor, an auditor or scrutineer to carry out a wholly unnecessary audit of our membership records.

We'll have to be careful if we want to use decent firms which recognise trade unions, since section 24ZB(4)(b) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (inserted by the Lobbying Act) prohibits from acting as an assurer anyone who employs "an officer" of the trade union or any of its branches.

Since an "officer" of the‎ union could include a shop steward, unions who might seek to unionise solicitors clerks, or the employees of auditors will have to tread carefully.

Since trade unions have a vested interest in having accurate membership records in any case, and since the previous Government never really bothered to justify the imposition of the new auditing requirements, it's clear that the essential purpose of Part Three of the Lobbying Act is to put trip wires in the way of unions seeking to take industrial action - and to encourage vexatious litigation from the right-wing fringe.

This will impel diligence on the part of assurers, and therefore - over time - the administrative burden of the regular membership audit will tend to increase.

Whether or not our foes will need to tie us in knots with this requirement now that they have a Government free to legislate openly against trade unions‎, we will nevertheless be paying for our Membership Audit Certificates for years to come.

‎Anyone would think, given the vigour with which the legislature seeks to regulate and control us, that the trade unions posed a threat to the rule of, by and for the 1%...

That is the
most important point which I want to make in this blog post – that we must show
solidarity with UNISON members in probation taking action, and take inspiration
from their action to every UNISON member.

We must,
however, also reflect upon the lessons which we can learn – throughout UNISON –
from our recent national pay disputes. The pay freeze across our public
services has slashed something like a fifth off the real earnings of UNISON
members across most of the sectors in which we organise. Now that we face an
even more hostile Government, holding the purse strings even where they do not
directly employ us, we need to develop a more effective approach towards
reversing the decline in our living standards that that which failed under the
Coalition Government.

Commenting
at the time on his 2012 Conference speech, Dave Prentis said; “I called on the TUC to organise a national
demonstration on October 20 and I told delegates that we have got to work
together to make it bigger than last March – it must be massive. Building
a movement, an unstoppable momentum an alliance of unions, community groups and
the public taking on this Government’s austerity agenda. I want it to be the
biggest campaign this union’s ever seen. The demo will be just the beginning as
we campaign and battle through the autumn and winter into next year.”

In fact it
took two years before we saw national industrial action over pay in health
and local
government, and when this action did come, it was not coordinated (either
in the timing of the action which was taken or in the demands for which UNISON
was fighting – in the health service we were striking for the implementation of
a 1% pay rise, which was what we were striking against in local government!)

The high
point of trade union opposition to the previous Government had been reached on 30 November 2011, when
coordinated strike action in defence of public service pensions, saw the
largest mass strike action since the 1926 General Strike.

When, the
following month, UNISON, led by Dave Prentis, initiated what became the
settlement of those disputes on terms which no honest and intelligent person
considers to have been a victory that set the tone for national industrial
relations for the remainder of the Coalition’s term of office.

The
subsequent national pay disputes in the intervening period have been poor
simulacrums of the pensions strike, repeating that tragedy as farce. We have
mobilised members around demands, in support of which – when the employers have
rejected them – we have called a token strike action before rapidly retreating
and letting members vote on unsatisfactory settlements in ballots in which we
have resolutely refused to offer any leadership.

The living
standards of our members continue to decline, but the boost to activism during
the period up to and including strike action has helped to moderate the decline
in UNISON membership, sustaining the financial viability of our organisation.

This half-hearted
opposition from UNISON, and most trade unions, to the attacks on our members
from (what we can now see was) a half-hearted Tory Government wasn’t good
enough then – and it certainly won’t be good enough now that we face a whole-hearted
Tory Government committed not only to austerity but to direct attacks upon
trade union rights.

In three
weeks delegates will gather at our National Delegate Conference. We need to use
that occasion as an opportunity to rethink how we organise and how we fight if
UNISON as a whole is going to live up to the example being set on 11 June by
our members in Probation.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

Much effort is being expended within UNISON to spread
complacency about the threat to the survival of the Union posed by the
Government’s manifesto commitment to “legislate
to ensure trade unions use a transparent opt-in process for union
subscriptions.” Considerable hope is invested in the possibility that no
new primary legislation to this effect will be flagged up in the Queen’s Speech
next Wednesday.

This desperate imitation of an ostrich completely
ignores, of course, the fact that our members in the civil service (for example
in that part of probation which has not been privatised) are – along with all
the other civil service trade unions facing the withdrawal of deduction of
contributions at source (DOCAS) without there having been any legislation at
all. There is little doubt that the Government has the same authority in the
English health service that it had in the civil service departments to drive
through similar changes without legislation should it wish to do so.

Obviously though, the Government would eventually need to
legislate if it wanted to force organisations which it does not directly control
to abandon DOCAS. Perhaps the silliest thing I have heard said this week on
this topic was a report from UNISON’s Greater London Region Recruitment and
Organisation Committee where – apparently – it was suggested that it would be
difficult for the Government to legislate away DOCAS. This suggestion betrays a
breathtaking ignorance of the recent history of employment legislation in the
United Kingdom.

Section 15 of the Trade Union Reform and Employment
Rights Act 1993 (as
originally enacted) amended section 68 of the Trade Union and Labour
Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 to require employers deducting union
subscriptions to have the signature of each employee at least once every three
years (until the New Labour Government repealed
this in 1998).

One option, if the Government wished to discourage DOCAS
would be to re-impose this restriction, or to require more frequent approval
(say annually). This would create a significant administrative burden on both
unions and employers and would probably impel the withdrawal of DOCAS in many
instances (since, as we know from the experience in the civil service, even
contractual arrangements with employers provide no useful safeguard to DOCAS
arrangements).

An even simpler legislative change would be to amend
either s68
of the 1992 Act or Section 13 of the
Employment Rights Act 1996 so
that deductions in respect of union subscriptions could not be authorised
deductions. This would mean that any employer making such deductions would be
at risk that any union member might, at any point, ask for all the
subscriptions deducted from their pay to be reimbursed to them. Unless trade
unions indemnified employers (at incalculable financial risk) employers would
clearly not bear that risk themselves.

Neither of these possible legal changes would be right,
or fair, or justifiable and each would only be considered by a Government which
cared nothing for fairness but was motivated by an ideological hostility to
trade unionism per se. A bit like a
Government that would introduce a 50% turnout threshold in strike ballots and a
threshold of 40% of the total membership voting yes in ballots in “essential
services.

The threat to DOCAS (the means whereby 70% of our members pay their union subs) is very real and very imminent and
anyone who doesn’t think we should give a high priority to preparing an urgent
response is not paying attention.